


Undertow

by fellowshipper



Category: Charmed
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Backstory, Brothers, Canon Related, Character Study, Creepy, Dark, Emotional Abuse, Future Fic, Incest, Introspection, M/M, One Shot, POV Second Person, Pining, Power Dynamics, Present Tense, Sexual Content, That Ain't Right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellowshipper/pseuds/fellowshipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have the magic, the vast amount of power that has left the world in ashes in your wake, but he is strong, unbreakable even in ways you know you can never be, and it has nothing to do with magic. / Unchanged future. Wyatt/Chris slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undertow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Caligula's Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/7458) by tigriswolf. 



> This is a kind of sort of almost companion piece to an absolutely stellar Chris/Wyatt fic (Caligula's Blood) by the very talented tigriswolf. It's haunting and gorgeous, all the more powerful for its brevity. It's dark, painful, exquisite, and hits all the most powerful notes and highlights exactly what is so moving and so disturbing about the brothers' relationship(s). I couldn't get it out of my mind after reading it, and thus this little fic was spawned. It can stand on its own, but it can also be read as a counter piece to "Caligula's Blood" as well, if you so choose.
> 
> Also: as a general rule, I don't like second person POV. It just feels awkward and unwieldy. I made an exception in here, in part to match the original's tone, part to challenge myself, and part because for the first time, it felt right. Go figure.

 He's beautiful when he's like this, whimpering and practically sobbing, on the verge of breaking and screaming, sweat beading on his skin and mouth hanging open in helpless abandon. He cries for you now, long, thin fingers reaching out to you, _for_ you, before his hands fall back down to the bed and twist in the sheets. Your own hand flexes around his neck, thumb pressing into the hollow point at the base of his throat, and you can feel him swallow hard and edge closer to panic. His eyes widen and he gasps for air, so you press harder. A warning. You won't hurt him. No more than he asks you to, at least. It's a well-choreographed dance by now and he knows that, or should, but sometimes he forgets. You only let up when his eyes start to lose focus, and he makes a noise somewhere between relief and disappointment, both tinged with surprise. He expects you to hurt him. Every time. He doesn't understand, he'll _never_ understand.

He makes you do these things. He makes you lose yourself and slip into old skins you shed long ago. They're too tight now and they chafe, but you do it anyway, just for him. Anything for him. You gave yourself to him completely, gave your very soul; he looks at you with fear and hate in his eyes even as he whispers that he loves you. But then, he's always been a skilled liar. Omissions, half-truths, outright lies tumble from his lips with equal ease. It makes no difference to him. You, on the other hand, have never been good at lying. Everything about you is freely displayed for all to see. Power is more effective when it's a constant visible force. He keeps everything inside, carefully hidden from everyone, even you, and you know everything about him. You like to think you know, anyway.

He twists sharply and grits his teeth, pushing his face into the pillow to muffle the delicious sounds burbling out of him. You grab his hair and pull his head up, breathless and eager to let him steal the air from your lungs to fuel his own lewd noises that you crave. His face is contorted and you wonder for a moment if you really are hurting him, then decide that it wouldn't matter now either way.

When he gets like this, wound up and anxious to play and yet still so agonizingly guilt-ridden, you like having him on his back and forcing him to watch. To look at you. To _see_ you. Sometimes you get the impression that if he isn't looking at you, you aren't really there. You're replaced with someone else, a ghost of a person that he thinks he remembers. That person never really existed anywhere but in his mind, but it makes him happy so you let him have that much. He's so rarely happy, and he's so beautiful when he smiles. You'd give anything to make him happy, absolutely anything that you haven't already bartered away, but you know in your heart that there is nothing left for you to give. He thinks you're lost beyond hope, but if that's true, if you really are, it's his fault. He's a black hole, pulling in everything until it's condensed to its fundamental elements and it doesn't even know itself anymore. He takes and takes, yet he offers nothing in return. Others think the opposite is true, but you know better. You use others because you have no other need for them; he uses you because you let him.

Because you love him.

Somehow, he's the victim here. He's the one who earns pitying glances from the few remaining half-breeds who know who he is and how he got to this place. He can be as cruel as winter, but the sadness and resignation in his eyes prevent anyone else from seeing how cold he really can be. How much he imitates you. It's flattering, you suppose, if also distressing. You love him because he's _him_ , because he's managed to hold onto everything you've lost, and yet just being around you is destroying him. You watch as pieces of him die and fade away, the holes left behind filled with hardened bitterness, and you know, you _know_ that it's your doing. Each day brings a new death, another piece irretrievably lost, and one day you expect to wake up and find yourself in bed with a total stranger who is nevertheless exactly like you.

You feel short, jagged fingernails digging into your skin and you hiss at the short-lived burning sensation before your flesh automatically heals itself. That doesn't stop him. He keeps scratching, digging deeper as if he really needs to _see_ your heart just to know it exists, like he doesn’t already know it rests in the palm of his hand. All he has to do is _look_ at you. The scratches come faster, angrier, and you notice fresh blood under his nails. There is no love there, not now, but there will be. When it's over and he comes back down to this facsimile he's ( _you've_ ) made, he'll cling to you and kiss you and swear that he loves you. But he's lost now, frenzied and out of his mind with rage and grief and whatever else it is that used to drive him, and you cherish these moments. This is when he's really alive, when you get just glimpses of what he once was, of the intensity that used to linger behind sharp green eyes and the boundless fury in his spirit. It's all gone now, dead like everything else in your life and in yourself, but now and then it gets resurrected. Now and then you get to play God and drag pieces of his lost soul back to the surface, reanimate his corpse and transform it into something almost like him. Almost. Just close enough to hurt and make you grieve for the brother you killed in spirit, if not in body.

He's thin, so very thin, and you worry that he might break in half with every turn of your hips, but in these moments he is defiant as ever, meeting every thrust and moaning, swearing under his breath because there is only so much his body can take. It's not enough. You're not close enough and you can never get as close as you'd like, not physically, not emotionally, not any way that really matters. You are one and the same, the shadow and the persona, but you will never be close enough. You can have him any way you like, whenever you like, because he is physically yours. But you can never _have_ him because you killed the part of him you most desired, and because no matter how many rules you've broken, how many sacrifices you've made and demanded be made to you, no matter how many times you've damned yourself, that is the one line that you would never cross. Were it yours to take, you could never steal that light from him. In the end, of course, you snuffed it out anyway, smothered it as it dimmed and died when it should have burned out in a sudden, fiery supernova.

Someone is whispering hoarsely, begging, and you're only mildly surprised to realize it's you. You've been pleading with him for as long as you can remember.

Play with me.

Come with me.

Talk to me.

Look at me.

Promise me.

Stay with me.

Kiss me.

Let me.

Trust me.

Come with me...

That's the one that repeats in your head at night when he's fast asleep and you're left staring at the ceiling until your eyes burn. It was what you told him when Mom died and he refused to leave her side even when the paramedics got there. When he made a scene by unleashing years of resentment on your father at the funeral. When you began a streak of revenge hunts in the Underworld. When you had to pick him up from school the day Paige was killed. When Phoebe followed a week later. When you found him at Mom's grave on that first anniversary, fifteen and drunk on cheap, stolen booze and sobbing until he simply ran out of tears, the Book of Shadows open in his lap and spiting him with every failed spell. When you were eighteen and moved out of Grandpa's apartment and back into the manor.

And he always followed. Like any little brother, he trusted you without question and always let you lead him, even into the pits of hell and back. Except that only one of you actually came back. He survived longer because he was always the stronger one between you. You have the magic, the vast amount of power that has left the world in ashes in your wake, but he is strong, unbreakable even in ways you know you can never be, and it has nothing to do with magic.

He always followed. Every time. You asked him to trust you with his life and soul and he did, over and over again, even after you had proven that you really couldn't be trusted at all. He always followed you, right up until he didn't. You asked him to pay tribute to you and for all your history with him, you still never saw that betrayal coming. You took his obedience for granted, never once recognizing what's become so obvious in hindsight. You woke in an empty bed, and though you had the world at your feet and the heavens in your palm, you had never felt so raw and vulnerable.

Though the resistance ultimately proved more of a nuisance than a legitimate threat, you lost many important allies in the battles the rebels waged. You took great pleasure in slaughtering them by the dozen, usually in mass public executions meant to deter any further attempts, but then you heard that the leader had been captured and you decided to grant him a personal visit. Looking back now, you realize that you always suspected who it was in your heart, but that still doesn't negate the wave of cold, all-consuming rage you felt when you opened the holding cell and saw him sitting on the floor. It doesn't do anything to erase the memory of the nausea that washed over you and nearly made your legs buckle. He looked up at you with an expression you had never seen before or since, one of pure and utter hatred, and of all the losses you've experienced in your life, that one look hurt you more than all the deaths and suffering. He had followed you straight into oblivion but pulled back at the last possible second, found some shred of himself to remind him who he was, and you had no idea if you should have been angry with yourself for allowing that final piece to remain or proud of him for being resilient enough to hold onto it after so much time.

You left the room without saying a word, and later that night you killed the demons who brought him in. You still don't even know why.

Days followed days and the resistance fell once the head was removed from the body. You found little comfort in that, preoccupied as you were with watching the only thing in existence that you love watch you in turn with hatred in his eyes and venom on his tongue. Weeks followed weeks and you saw that hatred slowly turn to fear, exactly the opposite process you inspire in others. They are afraid first and then, when they become immune to the pain, they learn to despise you. Not him. He would have killed you in those early days; you have no doubt about that. Even if such an attack would have cost him his own life, he would have made the attempt. That was difficult to accept, but even more upsetting was when you realized that he had at some point gone from staring holes through you to refusing to meet your eyes at all. You entered his cell and he trembled in the corner, and the softer your voice, the gentler your touch, the more he cowered and pushed against the wall to make himself as small as possible. To get away from you. Even if he hated you, he wanted to be around you. To kill you, sure, but he needed you. His persona needed the shadow around to hate.

It was a short trip from there to numb indifference. Without the driving intensity of his anger or the passion of the light inside him, he was left still and hollow. It was the same journey you made so long ago, the one that began the night of your mother's death. You were eaten alive by your rage, then frightened by what you saw was happening but were unable to resist, until finally you surrendered and let the darkness take you. He did the same. In the end, he followed you even there at last, just like you always knew he would. Like you feared he would.

He's disturbingly quiet these days, the barbs removed from his tongue and his mind dulled. He doesn't dare challenge you openly now, no matter how much you wish he would or how hard you try to push him into it. You only get that kind of response in bed now, when you catch a flurry of emotions flickering through his eyes and your heart races because he's finally showing signs of life. You know it's only fleeting and he'll be back to his new normal soon enough, but in those brief instants you feel alive, too, in a way that you've only ever felt with him and when you lose yourself to your powers.

He's crying out and writhing beneath you, simultaneously trying to break your hold on his too-thin wrists while frantically trying to get you deeper. He gasps for breath and every hair on your arms and the back of your neck stand on end as the air fills with the static hum of his powers. He's so much more powerful than he realizes; his telekinesis is stronger than yours, purer, and when he's worked up and cutting loose like this, you can feel him unconsciously pulling at you from every direction, threatening to rip you apart one molecule at a time. Vaguely aware of random objects around the room being knocked off shelves and stands or just hovering in mid-air, you allow yourself a grin and wrap your hand around him, thumbing roughly at the head. The window on the other side of the room cracks; after another hard thrust, the glass shatters completely and spills onto the carpet.

He breathes your name like a curse – maybe it is to him – and tightens down around you, draws you in and loses control at last. For once, you let him lead and you're happy to follow, tumbling along after him. Your concentration falters and you release your hold on his wrists where you had only used one hand to pin them over his head. You are immediately rewarded with skillful fingers dragging through your hair and pulling you down for a searing kiss that makes your heart stop. He hasn’t kissed you like this in weeks, months even, and you could cry from gratitude if you hadn’t already learned years ago that tears are a weakness, and demons do not tolerate weakness in a leader.

When you drop down next to him on the bed, he rolls over to face you and resumes the kiss, passionate and insatiable. It makes you feel lightheaded. Finally, he breaks away to take a few deep gulps of air and then smiles – really smiles – down at you, reaching out to brush a few strands of hair from your face.

“Love you.”

And he does. He means it this time, you can tell by the faint but still present spark in his eyes and the way he actually holds your gaze when he says it. Elated, you lift a hand to cup his cheek, returning his broad smile with one of your own. You don’t need to say it. You never have. He is alive and he is protected. That alone is proof of your feelings. The honest smile you reserve only for him – not the sneer most people get or the sarcastic smirk you offer when you find something slightly amusing – is but another sign of your genuine affection for him. The soul you fear you no longer have, the conscience you systematically destroyed so long ago, the blood on your hands that’s seeped so deep over the years you can no longer tell it from your own, that, too, speaks to your undying devotion to this boy. This man. You rebuilt the world for him, and you would just as readily tear it asunder if he only asked.

He never does.

Many years ago, you were a sixteen-year-old whose entire world fell apart around him. As your reality splintered into ruins, you held fast to the only constant you could find, the only stable point in your increasingly shaky existence. You swore to protect him, to keep the same fate from befalling him even if it meant turning into the very thing that had caused your family such eternal heartache. Whatever the cost. Against all odds, you succeeded. No being, magical or mortal, has ever claimed him. What you never anticipated, however, and what you never could have prevented, was that you could not protect him from yourself. You created this new world for him so that he would no longer need to fear an early death like everyone else in your family, but this new world is killing him, eroding everything that was good about him and everything you’ve fought so hard to preserve.

The light begins to die again as he turns his back to you, and you know by the sudden tension in his shoulders that he’s retreating back into himself because he no longer feels safe with you. You let him turn away but you still seek out his hand; he doesn’t lace his fingers through yours like he once did, but neither does he pull his hand back out of yours. He will betray you again. You know this now, you always have. If you wanted to, you could easily seek out one of your telepaths and force the secrets out of his head. You could bind his powers or cast a loyalty spell. You could do a lot of things if you only wanted.

He will betray you, but doing so will return the light and bring him back to himself, even for just a little while, and perhaps in the end he will smile. He’s so beautiful when he smiles.


End file.
